Marketing difficulties

Small business plays an important role in the life of any state. However, small enterprises in Ukraine face considerable difficulties. Among them is the inability to fully use the marketing tools available to major market players. How to remedy the situation, says Elena Eero, coordinator of the Unlimit Ukraine project of the European Business Association.

Regardless of the size of the business, a quality marketing strategy is one of the steps that, of course, must be taken at the start. However, unlike large firms, small businesses have many factors that make marketing more complex. Therefore, due attention is not always paid to it. One of these important factors is the lack of a certain budget and resources.

Why is marketing so important?

Marketing is a bridge that unites consumers and products in the market. Therefore, to build a marketing strategy should be approached strategically. In order for an organization to survive and occupy its market niche, marketing must be focused not on abstract production and sales, but on a specific consumer and his individual requests. There must be a clearly depicted portrait of the client, for example, what he eats, whether he has pets, does sports, and the like. And for this you need an understanding of what needs your product solves, how much of a client’s life is simplified with the purchase of this product / service, who generally is the buyer of the product and why, and so on. Actually marketing helps to answer these and many other questions.

However, for a manager of a small or micro-organization, these are the most difficult tasks. After all, we need: conducting market research on market research, market segmentation, selection of a target segment, assessment of its potential capacity, assessment of the risk of choosing a market niche and the strength of potential competitors.

Therefore, usually small entrepreneurs start not directly with marketing, but directly from direct sales. What is not a long-term perspective. After all, today the product is sold, and tomorrow - no.

Key advice for SMEs: Watch your customer and learn about its needs.

How to make the client happy

The first steps may not be very resource intensive. For example, when someone buys something from you, talk to a customer, see how your customer decides what kind of goods he buys, what day of the week, what questions he asks when buying and so on. Which channels best attract the audience - offline or online. Amuse customers with nice bonuses. Satisfied customers are the best word of mouth for small businesses.
Fortunately, nowadays there are quite a few communication channels with the client that do not require large capital investments. For example, social networks can coolly promote a certain product or product. Provided that the products are really high quality, and the owner is passionate about his work.
Remember, a small business has one significant advantage - flexibility. He can quickly and easily adapt to changes. Unlike a large one, there is no need for coordination with the main office, expectations for a decision, and the like. Therefore, I hope that small business will support European trends and develop more and more actively so that, in particular, its voice will sound stronger in the country.

Viewpoint of SME Owners

What, in your opinion, prevents actively and effectively using marketing for business development?

Vladimir Dyachenko, entrepreneur in the field of sales of climatic equipment

"I can name a few factors. A good marketer is expensive. On average, 5-20% of the cost will have to be paid when selling products through a networked and popular marketplace. Google Ads are expensive and not always available for small businesses."

Andrey Martyshko, patent attorney of Ukraine, Ternopil city

The main cause of small business problems in the field of marketing, especially in the regions, in my opinion, is the low level of education in the field of intellectual property management and understanding of its role in the development of enterprise competitiveness. There are frequent cases of plagiarism, misuse of logos, illegal advertising, counterfeit products - all this should encourage businesses to invest resources in protecting their own intangible assets, and also involve relevant professionals.

Nikita Polyak, the founder of the Internet marketing agency "Marketium"

The lack of understanding of what business needs from marketing, who to turn to, how to find an employee or choose a contractor is a problem caused by poor preparation, which is still very young for Ukraine, the stratum of entrepreneurs. This is the business and does not know why they need such a specialist, who is the second person in the company after the director. But even those who realized that without marketing they could not survive, do not know how to choose a specialist and what to assign to him. The second problem is the lack of expertise to assess what marketing is doing. The business does not understand how to evaluate the work of a marketer, which performance indicators are important and what to do with the data and reports.